Dispositional explanation

• What is Adorno’s explanation of obedience?

  In response to anti-semitism in WW2.

  Adorno argued high levels of obedience were dispositional/ a psychological disorder (authoritarian personality)

  Disagreeing with Milgram’s who suggested we are all capable of extreme obedience
• How did Adorno study Authoritarian personality?

  Adorno (1950s) studied personality with questionnaires.

  Questions revealed unconscious feelings towards minority groups.

  Developed the ‘F’/Facism scale
• What is one of the factors measured in the F-scale?

  Authoritarian Aggression

  • The tendency to be on the lookout for and condemn, reject and punish people who violate conventional values
• What are individuals who score high on the f-scale like?

  People who scored highly on the f-scale showed high respect for people with higher social status, had fixed stereotypes for other groups, identified with strong people and disliked weak people
• Why do individuals develop an authoritarian personality?

  Adorno suggested these people had their personalities shaped early in life by strict authoritative parenting with harsh physical punishments

  Anger from this experience was displaced onto others, mainly minority groups
• What was one issue with the f-scale questionnaire?

  The original f-scale questionnaire lacked internal validity.

  All questions were written in one direction, meaning that agreeing to all questions will label someone as authoritarian

  Therefore there is response bias
• Why is Adorno’s theory of obedience politically problematic?

  Authoritarian personality can be seen as a left-wing theory and inherently biased, as it identifies many individuals with a conservative political viewpoint as having a psychological disorder
• How does Elm and Milgram’s (1966) research support Adorno?

  Interviewed participants who had take part in the first 4 Milgram’s studies.

  Showed those that had shocked to the full 450 volts scored higher on the f scale than those who disobeyed
• How does Altemeyer’s research support Adorno?

  Altemeyer created a new scale to measure the authoritarian personality called the right-wind authoritarian scale.

  This fixed many issues with the f scale but still showed an association between high RWA and measures of prejudice
• Adorno et al. (1950) believed that unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder and tried to find its causes in the individuals personality
• Adorno et al. concluded that people with an Authoritarian Personality are especially obedient to authority.

  They:

  • Have extreme respects for authority’s and submissiveness to it
  • express contempt towards people of inferior social status

  Authoritarians tend to follow orders and view other groups s responsible for what’s wrong with society
• Authoritarian personality originates in childhood due to:

  • overly strict parenting
  • expectations of absolute loyalty
  • impossibly high standards
  • severe criticism
  • conditional love
• Childhood experiences create resentment and hostility which they can’t express directly on their parents due to fear of punishment.

  so the feelings are displaced onto social inferiors

  • scapegoating

  this is a psychodynamic explanation
• Adorno et al. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality- Procedure

  Investigated 2000 middle class white American’s unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups.

  Developed several scales including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale)
• Dispositional vs situational

  Adorno and Milgram’s had the same aim to understand the holocaust, but they came to different conclusions.

  • Milgram’s was convinced that everyone has the potential to behave in destructively obedient ways given the right circumstances
  • While Adorno believed that the causes of obedience lies within the individual themselves
• Adorno et al. (150) The Authoritarian Personality- Findings

  Authoritarians who scored high on the F-scale and other measures identified with ‘strong’ people and were contemptuous of the ‘weak’, they were conscious f their own and others’ status, swing excessive respect and deference to those of higher status.

  Authoritarians also had a cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between categories of people

  • they had fixed and distinctive stereotypes/prejudices about other groups
• Research support- A03

  Elms and Milgram’s (1966)

  • interviewed 20 fully obedient particpant from the original study
  • they score significantly higher on the f-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants

  suggests that obedient people may share many characteristics of people with an Authoritarian personality
• Contradicting findings- A03

  Subscales of the F-scale showed that obedient participants had characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians.

  • e.g. they didn’t experience high levels of punishment in childhood

  Suggests a complex link and that authoritarianism isn’t a useful predictor of obedience
• Authoritarianism can’t explain a whole country’s behaviour- A03

  Millions in Germany were obedient and displayed anti-Semitic behaviour but it’s unlikely they all had the same psychological disposition.

  • It seems unlikely that the majority of German’s had an Authoritarian personality

  It’s more likely that the Germans identified with the Nazi state

  Therefore SIT may be a better explanation
• Political bias- A03

  Christie and Jahoda (1954)

  • suggest the F-scale aims to measure tendency towards extreme right wing ideology

  But right and left wing authoritarianism both insist on complete obedience to political authority

  So Adorno’s theory isn’t a comprehensive dispositional explanation as it doesn’t explain obedience to left-wing authoritarianism
• Flawed evidence- A03

  The f-scale has been used in many research studies that have lead to an explanation of obedience based on Authoritarian Personality.

  But the F-scale is flawed due to being a questionnaire

  • e.g. acquiescence bias where people tend to agree with the statements and so are scored as authoritarian

  So explanations of obedience based on research with the F-scale may not be valid